How to Quickly Share Wi-Fi From Your Laptop With Virtual Access Point

26 Jan 2012

I love to play games on my Android smartphone and I use my 3G connection to download them. But some games require you to connect using Wi-Fi before you can download them. Previously, I didn’t have a Wi-Fi router in my house, and neither did my smartphone support Ad-Hoc network (until you root it and apply a patch), and that was the reason I was looking for a way to create a virtual access point using my laptop that could then share the internet wirelessly.

There are some tools like Connectify and Virtual Router that claim to provide a solution to the above problem but to me they created additional problems rather than solving the one I have. Soon after I installed Connectify, I started having random crashes with the infamous Blue Screen Of Death.

Luckily I came across a web service called Virtual Access Point (found on Raymond’s blog) that offers an easy solution using the built-in Virtual Wi-Fi technology in Windows 7. So let’s see how we can create a virtual access point and share the internet connection without breaking a sweat.

To begin, visit Virtual Access Point and type in a SSID (any name) and a password (minimum eight characters) and click on the button Turn On Soft AP. Also make sure you have the latest version of Java Runtime Environment installed on your system because it needs Java to work.

When the Virtual Access Point page asks you whether you want to run the Java Runtime Environment on the page, check the always trust option and click on the Run Button. The tool will now create a virtual wireless network connection using the Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter.

Once the access point is up and running it’s now time to share the internet connection. To share the internet connection to the newly created access point open Control Panel—>Network and Internet—>Network Connections. You can also open it directly using the link present on the Virtual Access Point home page right after you create a new access point.

Now right-click on the newly created virtual adapter and click Properties.

Under the Sharing tab check the option Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection and select the connection you want to share. Now click on the OK button and confirm your actions.

Your internet connection will be shared instantly. I tested the newly created access point on my smartphone and I could connect to the internet without any problem.

Once you are done, click on Turn Off Soft AP button on the Virtual Access Point page.

From now on, whenever you create the virtual access point, the internet will be shared by default. If anytime in the future you want to revoke the sharing on the internet, you can do that by changing the properties of the virtual adapter.

My Verdict

Creating virtual access point and sharing the internet has never been this easy. No software, no wizards, no irritating error codes, just open the browser and press a button, that’s all (and some easy steps in the network sharing center).